Classes Stay In One Place

How would she find her way around school? Would she have enough time to get to her classes? Could she deal with having seven teachers?

"I was like so scared," said Melissa, who was a fifth-grader at Sandpiper Shores Elementary School west of Boca Raton in the last school year. "I didn't know where my classes would be, so I thought I would be tardy."

But the new school year has started off just fine for Melissa, 11, now a sixth-grader at Loggers' Run Middle School west of Boca Raton.

Instead of running around, trying to get from one class to another, Melissa spends most of her day in one classroom with 26 other students in an experimental program designed to take the anxiety out of the switch to middle school.

Melissa is in one of two sixth-grade classes at Loggers' Run where students have the same teacher for all their main courses, just like in elementary school.

They venture into the school's hallway hustle only for gym and one elective class.

"It's kind of hard to get through. All those people are bumping into you," Melissa said of the class changes. "I'm glad I don't have, like, eight classes."

School officials hope the 53 students in the LEAD program -- Learning, Enjoying And Discovering -- will be on surer footing and better able to succeed after being given a little closer attention in sixth grade.

The voluntary program is one of the main projects to come out of the school's designation as a deregulated school, giving officials there more opportunities to try innovative programs to improve student achievement.

Some students in the program were identified by fifth-grade teachers who thought the children might not be quite ready for the traditional middle school structure, usually because these students were quieter or younger than most of their peers.

Some could benefit from learning better organization skills, officials said.

Others were picked at random and offered a chance to join the program. A few others came to the program after their parents heard about it and asked that their children be included.

"We were looking for the average child. The average, normal child," said Dianne Tetreault, who teaches one of the two classes. "We're looking to see if this makes a difference in their future academic success."

Besides having smaller classes -- many middle school classes hover around 35 students -- students set goals for themselves and a timetable for achieving them.

Tetreault and teacher Stephanie Margolis said the first three weeks have confirmed in their minds the benefits of the program.

"They're much more comfortable. They communicate more effectively. They're much more at ease with the academics as well as the social aspects of middle school," Tetreault said. "They've acclimated themselves perfectly well."

And the classes allow teachers to know their students much better. Instead of having to get to know 120 students, Tetreault said, she can concentrate on the 27 in her class.

The program also provides more class time. While other students are switching classes, getting settled into their next period or winding down in anticipation of the bell, students in Tetreault's class are hard at work.

"The bells do ring," Tetreault said. "We don't hear them anymore."

While the idea is new in Palm Beach County, it is being done in other areas of the country.

Many middle schools in California have similar setups for their sixth-grade students, an outgrowth of a 1987 state study on the need to help students with the transition to middle school.

"It helps the kids adjust to a different kind of lifestyle," said Debbie Simpson, a guidance counselor at Almeria Middle School in Fontana, Calif., where all sixth-graders are in self-contained classrooms. They don't start a larger class rotation until seventh grade.

"It's helping them be less stressful, having them be more successful," Simpson said. "It accommodates them more."

Student Megan Panagopoulos said she was actually looking forward to changing classes at Loggers' Run.

"I thought it would be kind of cool because you'd see your friends in the hall," Megan said.

But now, with three weeks under her belt, Megan likes her new setup better.

"It's cool. You don't get pushed around. I didn't know that we were going to get pushed around," Megan said of the hallway congestion. "My friends say, `You guys are like still in elementary school.' But I say, no, it's better."

Students have a class change, when they go to their elective class on the last period of the day.

But for most of the day, they don't have to carry books from class to class, and they don't have to rush.

Principal Judy Klinek said the school might expand the program in future years, but she doesn't think it would ever be for all sixth-graders.

"I think some children and their parents are looking forward to the excitement of changing classes and having seven teachers," Klinek said.

Larry Barszewski can be reached at lbarszewski@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6637.